The Monarch

by Jack Soren

  When the avalanche stopped, he coughed and waved at the air. He struggled back to his feet and climbed up the small mountain that had spilled out of the shaft and dug a space big enough for him to fit through. Looking up at the four-­story tube over his head, he whistled. The echo sounded like a bullet ricochet.

  “This will be harder,” he said, wiping sweat and dirt off his face before grabbing the ladder that led fifty feet straight up. The ladder wiggled in his hands, some of its moorings likely having come loose in the attack. “Perfect.”

  With little choice, he stuck the rebar in his belt loops again and started the long, rickety hop-­climb. If a second attack came now, he knew it would all be over, but chances were he wouldn’t notice for long.

  8:10 A.M.

  “HOW’S THE PAIN?” Jonathan asked.

  As they walked up the road, he’d noticed Sophia wasn’t leaning on him as much. He held her arm around his shoulders, slouching so she didn’t have to reach up, and his other arm was around her back, his hand on her side, his fingers lightly gripped her bare abdomen.

  “Better,” she said, “but if I don’t get to a medical facility soon, I’m going to be in trouble. Who knows what the bullet dragged into the wound with it.” Jonathan nodded. He’d been thinking the exact same thing, but hadn’t wanted to make matters worse by saying so.

  He looked over at Emily. She’d been quiet ever since her breakdown at the sight of the complex collapse. And she was hanging on to the gun as if it held the cure for cancer. He felt sorry for anyone she came across. Natalie was holding her free hand, as if she could sense that Emily needed human contact at the moment.

  “If your father and Lara beat us to the chopper, any ideas about how we’re going to convince them to fly us out of here?” Jonathan said. “Assuming he’s still on the ground by the time we get there.” His Plan A was to just kill Nathan and Lara and then take the helicopter, but they were Sophia’s family, and Jonathan wasn’t all that sure he could kill someone with his daughter watching anyway. In fact, he knew he couldn’t.

  “In my bag there’s a blue vial. He’ll do just about anything to get it. And, of course, there’s this,” Sophia said, grimacing as she pulled the USB drive out of her pocket and showed it to Jonathan.

  “What’s that?”

  “All the research. The only copy, in fact. Without it, he could have God’s brain in that box and it wouldn’t help him. Believe me, he’s not going anywhere until he gets this,” she said, sounding angry and almost vengeful. She put the drive back in her pocket.

  “You think he’ll really transport us out of here for it?” Jonathan asked.

  “We need to find another way,” Sophia said. “There’s something about my research I didn’t tell you before. Something I only recently confirmed.”

  “What is it?” Jonathan said, worry nibbling at him.

  “The injected proteins do more than just unfold the prions back into healthy proteins,” she said.

  Jonathan recalled what Sophia had told him in her lab, how replicating folded proteins had caused Nathan’s disease.

  “What else do they do?” Emily asked. He hadn’t even noticed that she was listening. He’d almost completely forgotten she was a journalist. Wrapping her mind around a new puzzle was probably exactly what the doctor ordered. Besides, when she drifted back to hear them, Natalie had let go of her hand and was now holding his. He felt his heart slow and his whole body calm.

  “The proteins seem to transfer the electrical impressions they were imprinted with in their host. They get mixed with the existing impression base, but there’s a definite retention happening while experiencing the protocol,” she said. Sophia told him about the anomalous mice that could run her maze perfectly without ever seeing it before just by injecting them with the altered proteins from donors who had run it.

  “Impressions,” Jonathan said. He stopped in his tracks and turned to face Sophia. “Wait a minute. You’re talking about memories. Jesus, he’s retaining the memories of the donors?!”

  “More or less,” Sophia said, looking at the ground.

  “What do you mean, more or less?” Jonathan said.

  “My research was nowhere near complete, but aside from memories, there may have been some transfer of raw intelligence. Basically, the mice didn’t just have new knowledge, their ability to apply that knowledge increased as well.”

  “Oh my God,” Emily said. “Einstein.” Jonathan had been thinking the exact same thing.

  “Jesus,” Jonathan said, thinking about what it would mean if Nathan used Einstein’s brain for one of his treatments. He was going to make sure that didn’t happen. “Let’s see what we can barter with the serum and take it from there.”

  “I think that’s wise,” Sophia said.

  “But if he won’t play ball . . .” Jonathan trailed off, looking down at Natalie, but she didn’t seem interested in what they were talking about.

  “What is it?” Sophia asked.

  “You have to understand that my only concern right now is getting Natalie to safety. If your father refuses to help . . . I’ll need to convince him,” Jonathan said. Sophia looked at the ground again and nodded.

  “I know. You probably won’t believe this, but Natalie is my main concern right now too,” Sophia said. Jonathan looked her in the eye. She looked like she was telling the truth. She also looked like there was something she wasn’t saying.

  “What is it?” he asked. She stopped walking and took a cleansing breath.

  “Nathan isn’t my father.”

  “What? But I—­”

  “He’s been lying to me my whole life,” she said as she continued walking toward the helipad. “But worse than that, he somehow convinced my mother to lie to me. Lara and I were barely out of diapers when he showed up, but I still remember my mother telling us he was our father and we were going to go live with him in a big house and never be hungry again. I’ve always thought of that day as the greatest day in my life. I’ve lost everything now. Even my history.”

  Jonathan didn’t say anything, just held her a little tighter, pretending he didn’t see the tears snaking down her caramel cheeks. He felt a burning rising up inside him. Nathan was anathema to everything he touched. Jonathan had been hoping they were wrong and when they got to the helipad he wouldn’t be anywhere in sight. Now he was looking forward to meeting this bastard one last time.

  “What kind of resistance are we looking at when we get there?” Jonathan asked, changing the subject when it was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it anymore right now. Sophia told him about the four posted guards. The attack might have scared them into the jungle, but he doubted it. The guards they’d seen so far seemed to be ex-­military hard cases. It would probably take more than a few bangs in the distance to send them running.

  “Why does he have so many guards?” Jonathan asked.

  “I’ve never had much to do with that side of things. When we were kids, there was always Thomas and a few bodyguards, but that was it. But even before he got sick, his style of business tended to attract a considerable amount of animosity and revenge seekers. When I came back from university, he’d replaced the bodyguards with ex-­soldiers and their numbers had doubled. Over the past ten years it’s just gotten worse. The paranoia of the disease over the past five years once the symptoms showed up has exacerbated things as well. There was rarely a month that went by when we didn’t hire more guards. I tried to ignore it all and just do my work, I’m ashamed to say.”

  They walked on in silence for a while. Jonathan hadn’t meant to open a wound for her, he just wanted to know what he’d be facing. But with her past, maybe opening a few wounds wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “I can’t believe she tried to kill me,” Sophia said out of the blue. Jonathan held her a little tighter under his arm.

  “There is a silver lining, if it’s any conso
lation,” Jonathan said.

  “What’s that?”

  “They probably think Lara was successful,” he said. Sophia seemed to take little comfort in the fact.

  “How you doing, baby?” Jonathan asked Natalie.

  “Good,” Natalie said, but she sounded tired and looked even more so.

  “I can walk on my own for a while if you want to walk with Natalie,” Sophia said.

  “You sure?” Jonathan asked. She seemed steady enough. “Just shout out if you need help,” Jonathan said. Natalie reflexively took his arm.

  “We’ll be out of her soon,” Jonathan said.

  “I know,” Natalie said with a smile.

  “You do, do you?”

  “Don’t say anything,” Natalie said, leaning in conspiratorially to Jonathan. “But I had the dream again last night.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, but this time I saw the woman’s face!” Natalie said.

  “Who was it?”

  Natalie nodded toward Sophia.

  Jonathan smiled and hugged Natalie with one arm. He figured Sophia’s saving Natalie in the complex had probably placed her image into Natalie’s dream.

  What if there’s more to it?

  8:20 A.M.

  LARA COULDN’T BELIEVE that this was where she had lived.

  The complex was gone, nothing but uneven rubble remaining. One side of the main level had collapsed into the second level, leaving a kind of ramp that led from where Lara stood to the elevator shaft. The elevator for both the first and second levels was visible now, the first level door looking bizarre as it hung up in the air with no floor leading to it.

  Lara kicked through the debris, looking for her sister’s body, her head snapping up at the slightest sound like a pigeon eating breadcrumbs in the park. The others were nowhere to be seen, but she took comfort in the sight of Thomas still lying on the ground on the other side of the courtyard, partially covered with debris. She’d had some crazy idea that when she got down here he’d be standing against a tree waiting for her, cleaning his nails with the knife, a look of disappointment on his face. She’d never actually believed that Thomas loved her, not until the final moments of his life when he’d looked her in the eyes as he died. Her father never would have let him live knowing that. And if he had to die, she was glad it was she who had done it. She thought it was romantic.

  It was comforting to see everything where she’d left it—­except for the complex, of course. There didn’t seem to be anything under the rubble, but more rubble. She rationalized that if Sophia had somehow survived, it might get Lara out of trouble with her father. But she knew that was foolish thinking. Her father was never going to be pleased with her, no matter what she did or didn’t do. He had always been hard on her, but something had changed after he told her she wasn’t really a Kring. Not by blood, anyway.

  You’re being paranoid. Some bits of concrete tumbled down behind her and she spun around. Nothing there. But a few feet away she saw something sticking out of the debris on the ground. She made her way to it and knelt, pulling the black material out of its hiding place. It was Sophia’s backpack.

  Lara smiled slightly at her success. She examined the pack, seeing three holes through it. I knew I hit her. Though just three holes was disappointing. She touched one of the holes and her fingers came away wet and red. Her smile grew.

  She stood, swinging the backpack over her shoulder, and carefully made her way out of the disaster area. A twisted ankle was the last thing she needed now. It would impede her ability to fly the helicopter. Yet another disappointment for her father. Not that he needed a reason.

  She heard a scraping sound and stopped, looking around. She didn’t see anything and was going to continue her climb out of the wreckage when she heard it again. At the bottom of the rubble ramp she saw something stick through the seam in the elevator doors. A bar of some sort. She watched as it wiggled around, like it was trying to escape whatever was on the other side of the doors.

  “What the . . .” Then slowly the doors parted, the inside too dark to reveal anything from this angle with the morning sun behind the shaft. The doors opened all the way and a moment later a strange man leaped into view, his back half still hanging inside as he gripped the sliding gravel under his fingers, trying to pull himself out of the hungry elevator. Lara just stared, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  Who the hell is that?

  Resting from his struggle, the man panted for air, his gasps sending dust pluming up from under his mouth. Then he looked up and saw her. For what seemed like minutes, they just looked at each other, waiting for the other to make a move. The man made it finally, which sparked Lara to action.

  “Hey . . .” he said, reaching a hand out as if to ask for help. Lara pulled her gun and fired wildly as she ran out of the rubble field. “No!” the man shouted before he fell back into the elevator shaft.

  Lara kept running, still pulling the gun’s trigger as she ran, hollow clicks the only reaction from the weapon. She finally tossed it aside and ran into the jungle, the bloody backpack bouncing over her shoulder.

  LEW’S FINGERS FELT like they were going to snap off, the pain of the broken ones slowly challenging the stabbing in his leg. He’d fallen several feet before he’d managed to grab hold of the ladder, avoiding plunging to his death in the rubble. He kicked his uninjured leg, looking for something to step on, finding nothing but smooth concrete on the wall of the shaft. Almost fully exhausted, he dug deep and growled as he pulled with his less injured hand, his chest slamming down onto sharp hunks of broken stone. He wiggled from side to side until he managed to pull himself completely out of the gaping pit and roll onto his back. His head swam from the pain and he had to will himself to stay conscious.

  “Crazy . . . fucking. . . . bitch,” he muttered, catching his breath. He wanted to stay there, let the blackness take him and sleep forever, but Lara might be his only chance of getting off this damn island.

  Lew got to his feet and limp-­hopped his way out of the destruction. He saw Thomas lying on the other side of the courtyard and shook his head. “Love stinks, brother,” he said, looking up the road, squinting from the glare of the morning sun. Lara was nowhere to be seen, but about halfway up the rising hill in the jungle he saw vegetation moving. Of course. Couldn’t take the fucking road, oh no.

  Lew headed off into the jungle, stopping on the edge of the vegetation when he heard a buzzing overhead. He looked up and saw the drone that had caused the destruction. He knew that somewhere—­probably hundreds of miles away or on a ship off shore—­there were soldiers watching him through the cameras that hung beneath the drone’s nose. What the hell it was doing here, he had no idea. Nor did he care. Knowing wouldn’t help him. The only thing that would help was to not be here if the remote piloting soldier decided to finish what he started. He flipped the craft the bird and limped into the jungle.

  If they were going to unload one of the five-­hundred-­pound bombs he could see hanging from its belly, he was going to make sure he was standing right beside psycho bitch when they did.

  8:30 A.M.

  JONATHAN CRAWLED UP to the crest of the jungle hill, slipping between the trunks of two trees until he could see the helipad below. He understood now why it was so far from the complex. The helipad was a natural, flat stone outcropping at the very edge of the island, as if Mother Nature had put it there for helicopters to land on. The far edge of the platform dropped off, the sea a hundred feet below. The road they had been on—­fifty feet below him—­was blasted out of the jungle so it ran neatly onto the helipad. A single small hut sat at the edge of the helipad, and through the big windows Jonathan could see two guards and Nathan in his wheelchair. In the center of the helipad sat a Bell 407 single-­rotor helicopter perched beneath camouflage netting attached to four posts on wheels. Another guard was busy rolling the netting back.

 
It was a risk with the drone still flying around up there somewhere, but it was necessary. Jonathan knew the helicopter needed time to rev up before it could make a run for it, and the netting had to be out of the way for that to happen. But to rev it up they needed a pilot, and Lara was nowhere to be seen.

  LEW’S HAND SLIPPED off the tree he’d been aiming at and he fell to his knees, pain shooting white spots into his vision. He turned to the side and dry heaved, spitting stringy bile onto the jungle floor. Using the tree as a crutch, he managed to get himself back up to his feet. He held his hands out in front of him and watched them shake.

  Looking up the hill, he tried to find the vegetation movement he’d been following, but the jungle was deathly still. He had no idea how much farther this mountain rose, but he could hear the ocean now, crashing somewhere in the distance. Either that, or it was what little blood he had left pounding in his ears. He suppressed another bout of retching and pushed on.

  Where the hell is she?

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Sophia asked, reaching into her bag.

  “Honestly?” Jonathan said, back down with the girls after reconnoitering the helipad. “Not in the least. But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

  She handed him the glass vial filled with the blue serum.

  “What else do you have in there?” Jonathan asked. She opened the bag up so he could see. It was a myriad of junk, most of it useless. But he reached in and pulled one item out.

  “What do you need a—­”

  “Dad?” Natalie said.

  “Honey, I told you, it’s going to be okay,” Jonathan said.

  “You stay with Emily. No matter what, okay?”

  “M’kay,” she said, moving over to Emily who put her arm around her.

  “Be careful,” Emily said.

  Sophia leaned over and kissed Jonathan on the cheek.

  “For luck,” she said. Jonathan looked at Natalie, who was grinning from ear to ear. He winked at her, despite what had happened to Lew when Emily had given him a kiss for luck. He handed Sophia his gun and then headed down the road toward the helipad.